Flat Tire, Sunshine and Hail
It was time to continue on. Although it had, once again, rained in the night, but it had stopped by morning. We got a fairly early start and headed south, back to Dawson City, with a planned stop on the way to find the Northern Hawk Owl...the best made plans...
As we got to the end of the Dempster Highway, Speedy felt a little squirrelly as we went over the bridge at the end of the road, just before getting back on the paved Klondike Highway. We pulled into the gas station on the corner and found another flat tire. It was the other rear tire. This time something had cut the tread right at the top of the sidewall, exposing a broken steel belt. Another tire ruined.
Once again, Harry and I replaced a rear tire with the old spare tire. We got it on with minimal problems, but managed to blow out the seal on the hydraulic jack. We put the dead tire inside Speedy and decided to go directly to Dawson City to try to find a replacement tire. The detour to find the Hawk Owl was cancelled. Hopefully, we will find it elsewhere.
We stopped at an auto supply and repair place recommended by a trucker who pulled into the station before we left, but they did not have a tire of the correct size in stock and, since it was Aboriginal Peoples Day, a holiday, they wouldn't even be able to order it from Whitehorse until tomorrow. As a last resort, they suggested trying the same dawson RV Park we had stayed in as they were also a tire shop. We did and they had a replacement, an Ironman brand tire, which I'd never heard of, but I didn't want to be without a spare as we still have about 100 miles of gravel roads before we get to pavement in Alaska.
We bought the tire...and since we were already there, washed Speedy which was now covered by a waist-high, thick, dark brown, muddy coating from the damp gravel roadway on the Dempster.
While we were having the tire repairs done, Harry and Sally drove into Dawson City proper to visit the Dänajoà Zho Cultural Centre, an interpretive center for the Tr'ondëk Gwëch'in. With our tire replaced and a relatively clean Speedy, we drove into town to find them. We found their van, but not them. They were walking along the river, since the cultural centre would not open until 2 PM due to the Aboriginal Day celebrations.
After we found them, we went uptown for lunch and then walked over to the Aboriginal day festival at cultural center which had music and more food and free coffee. After the centre opened we found another modern building with very interesting exhibits and a video of life of the tribe, its displacement during the gold rush and its return in the 90's.
While we were sitting around at the festival waiting for the center to open, Harry, seeing how clean Speedy looked, decided to take their Roadtrek up to the car wash as well. Since their van is a gold color, its dirt wasn't as obvious, except at the bottom where the wide dark gray trim was now the same color as the rest of the van.
We were now Speedy and Shiny once more and after the cultural center it was time to move on and cross the Yukon River.
The Yukon Government runs a free ferry across the Yukon River from Dawson City to the beginning of the Top of the World Highway on the other side. As we waited for the ferry, it started to rain. It was pouring down as we crossed amid thunder and lightning. We were only going to the Yukon River government campground just up from the ferry landing. As we drove into the campground, it started to hail. It rained marble-sized hail for about 15 minutes straight. We quickly pulled into the first open sites we found to wait out the storm. It left about an inch of hail on the ground by the time it stopped.
Once the storm let up, we searched for a pair of sites together, but had to turn around about halfway down the campground loop due to a fallen tree blocking the road.
Finally, we found a couple of adjacent pull-through sites and stopped for the day. As we were searching for sites, we saw many that were taken by motorcycle campers in tents. As much as we have been jealous of all the bikes we've seen riding through the Yukon, we didn't envy them huddled in their tents in the hailstorm.
We just settled in to dinner in Speedy, followed by a walk around the campground and called it a day.
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